Menu

Money in War: Research into the Life of Just One Financial Marine (Part I)

your closing conclusion: ‘Hopefully in the coming years, our fellow men will learn to live voluntarily with one another, and that violence only exists if we allow it to.’ really does say it all… This is a big wish of mine as well. Hope we both live to see it become reality…

September 11th, 2001; I turned 10 years old a few months prior and had just started fifth grade. They didn’t show the news coverage in my school for a long time, and my teacher had to do it without permission. I remember a cloudy feeling of doom: our country was plunging into war. What was going to happen? I learned about the Revolutionary War — the war against an oppressive government; the Civil War — the war of the federal government against the states; and Vietnam — the war we never “won.” What would this new war be against? A new word started appearing everywhere, “terrorism.” Something just wasn’t right. “How long will we be at war?” I thought, “Hopefully not that long. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as Vietnam.”

13 years later, I am almost 23 years old. I have lived over half of my life during a…